I intend to write up a nice long and thoughtful post about the process of writing this novel.
Since I just finished it in one marathon session, I think that post can wait.
For now, all you get is my YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATAAAAAAAAAAAA.
Done. Too short, probably a hideous mess that no one will ever want to read, but done. Done.
Hey, there’s a reason they call it a rough draft, and that editing was invented.
But hey. Done.
I think this is one of the parts of kick-starting a writing career that *isn’t* fun. The novel is grinding along, and the rejections are pouring in for my short work. Everywhere I turn it seems I hear “this was good but…” which as all the how-to books and advice out there will tell you is a very good thing ™ and a sign of progress ™.
What they don’t tell you is that almost good enough starts to get really really depressing after the first couple of near-misses. Yay, my writing is improving. Yay editors are clearly reading the entirety of my stories before they dash off the rejection note. Yay, progress! Head down, keep going. Right? Well, sure. Not much else I can do. But it’s frustrating (and I doubt any established writer would tell me that it wasn’t frustrating for them in the beginning either, or even still is on occasion). And who knows how many years of near-missing I’ll have to muddle through? At Worldcon I met a woman who’s been getting those nice rejections for 11 years without a single sale. Now, I suppose she could have been lying about the nature of the rejections, and to be fair she only sends out five or six stories a year, but still. 11 years. Frankly, I just don’t know if I have that kind of fortitude. I joke about 500 rejections, but can I really hang on without a single sale through 479 more of these? My spreadsheet that tracks what is out where is starting to look like a mess of black and the word Rejected covers the screen.
On the somewhat plus side, I’m nearly done with the novel. It’s slow going, my normal cruising speed has been down to a third because I’m having to carefully pull together two storylines and three POV characters. And here I thought the ending would be a cakewalk to write. Nothing is predictable about this process, is it? Technically I gave myself the deadline of the end of the month, but I’ve got about 15k words left I think. So it’s not going to be done tomorrow. By the weekend though, hopefully. Then I can put it aside and worry about something else for a while. (And maybe, by the time I’m done I’ll know about my WotF entry? Maybe… though I suppose at this stage no news could be good news.)
Don’t worry. I haven’t been rejected to death yet. I promised myself ten novels and ten years. Will I be a ranting crazy person or a catatonic ball by the end? Perhaps. Or I might be a selling writer.
Only one way to be the latter: Finish this damn novel.
See? I’m not posting. Because I’m too damn busy with this stupid novel draft to post. Seriously. What are you still reading? Nothing to see here, move along.
I’ve added three chapters so far on top of what my outline had planned for this novel. I was worried before that I’d come in under 100k words, now I’m hoping I don’t go too far over. Apparently this plot was too linear for my brain to handle and so it had to insert some more tough choices just to further mess with the main character. Hopefully the novel will be better for it, however.
I’m predicting this will add two or three days to the schedule. Will Nobu write through the weekend? Say tuned.
Wait, don’t stay tuned. Remember? There’s nothing to see here.
(I’m convinced: only insane people write novels.)
Woke up at 4am because of the cat. Stayed awake because I’d been having an awesome dream about being a stowaway on an alien ship that then got attacked by pirates and knew it could be a super cool short story. Normally when I have a story idea it has to brew for a week or a month or a year. Apparently all this one wanted was about 4 hours.
Well, it’s a story anyway. After 7.5 hours of nearly continuous writing, the monstrosity that is “Crawlies” is now complete. After a “oh god how messy is this” editing pass it stands at 7715 words. Bleh. I was aiming for 4000. Is this what plot does? Cause baby, this story has plot. Hell, it’s got everyting. Provided that everything means aliens, pirates, an 11 year old protagonist, bombs, and exploding head jokes. My research firefox window currently has open windows from wikipedia for oxygen toxicity, acute respiratory distress syndrome, and squid. Lord save me, there’s even slang. It was like this character waltzed into my head and wouldn’t shut the hell up. Of course, she’s 11, she doesn’t shut the hell out anyway. I wish writing was always this easy. Even if it doesn’t let me do anything else.
Now that my work day is gone, I’m going to go eat something (sorta forgot to do that in the ‘writer will finish or she gets the hose again’ fog I’ve been in most of today).
In the other kinda of ego-boosting news (no, not the yet again “close but try again” rejection I got today), one of my poetry chapbooks sold at the bookstore COLD. As in a random stranger who is no relation to me chose my little self-published being sold on commission chapbook all by himself with no arm twisting from my mother and paid COLD DELICIOUS CASH for it. I feel pretty good about that. Poetry is hard to sell, and this means that mine was good enough to attract a random human’s interest. Or you know, so bad he couldn’t resist buying it to chortle at the next wine and schadenfreude party. I’m going to believe the former. For my peanut-sized ego’s sake.
Ok, now, to post this monstrous new baby of mine somewhere for critique. Oh why oh why is it so long? Curse you baby.
But I love you. In fact, today (and probably only today), I love writing. Thank you writing gods. Now, can I please have a nice compelling dream about how to finish this novel? K thanx.
Oh yeah, and if you think I was kidding about my mother arm twisting people, you should talk to Ken Scholes*. I’m surprised he made it out of there without a chapbook. Lucky bastard. You know you’ve hit a sad sad hole in your social life when your mother has to do your networking for you. Thanks mom. 28 is just like 8, somedays. At least she didn’t try to arrange a play date or anything.
(*Ken Scholes is, in fact, as far as my limited mother-twisted arm contact with him has gone, a supremely tolerant and nice guy. Buy his books).
I’ve been reading over all the comments I’ve ever gotten on my writing. Between the MFA classes, the editor comments on rejections, and the two con workshops I’ve done (not to mention the great help my friends give as well), that’s actually a ton of feedback. And I see a pattern, a very annoying pattern.
I think I’m weak at plot. Not that I don’t grasp what plot is, or that my stories exactly lack it, but the kinds of comments I often get involve the structure of how and why things are happening, or my personal favorite (heh) comment that recurs a lot which is “this would make a great chapter of a novel”. When my plots are strongest, they reach too far and involve too much for the short story frame. When they aren’t, well, readers are confused by what’s happening or don’t feel that the ending was satisfying or inevitable.
This means I gotta roll up my proverbial sleeves and work on this. I don’t think it’s necessarily an issue in my novels since the longer form lends itself to plot development (plus I outline constantly with novels). My short stories need work. I’m not going to worry too much about the ones already written. They are what they are and if I can patch them up I will, but going forward with the next few shorts, I’m going to work damn hard on making the structure sound. There are plenty of formulas for plot out there. I don’t tend to follow them, instead letting the story develop on its own. Maybe I’ve strayed too far, however. Clearly something isn’t working because my stories are getting the “close but no” response. The comments from others hint that it might be plotting issues.
The good news is that this is something I think will be reasonably easy to fix. It’s just going to take me staying mindful of where a story is going. I think the next few short stories I’m going to do mini-outlines for, same as I do for my novels just on a smaller scale. I’ll probably outline scene by scene and see what results. I may also try to fit some of my ideas to plot structures (likable hero overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds, or hero tries, makes it worse, tries and fails even worse, then finally succeeds, or one of those formulas that abound out there for story structure).
It’s weird. I used to hate writing dialogue and I felt like every character I had sounded the same. I started working hard to build characters up and get my dialogue to sound normal. Soon enough, I started getting comments on stories that my dialogue and characterization were great. Then it was that my beginnings were always rough. So I started working on beginnings (still am, I think beginnings will always be rough for me since I tend to write my way into the story). Sometimes I feel like my writing is this monstrous creation. I poke at the weaker parts and build them up, then realize that other parts are now weaker and my monster is lopsided again. So I poke at those parts, rinse, repeat. It looks like plotting is the next weak limb that needs beefing up.
The novel is progressing. I reread a few chapters (and ended up doing some line editing since eeks I’m wordy in my rough drafts) and am part way into the next chapter. I’m guessing I’ll finish somewhere close to 100k words, maybe a little over since I’ve got some scenes to add to help weave it all together. I’m rebuilding my writing momentum and optimistically hope that I can get back up to a chapter a day by the end of the week. I need to sit down with the outline tomorrow and update it with the new scenes I’m imagining for the end of each of the upcoming chapters. It’s tough to split the main characters up since the main plot right now only pertains to one of them, but I think as a reader I’d want to know what’s going on with the other two during this time, plus I need to show the passage of time since three years are about to pass but for the main character it’s going to seem more like a few weeks. I can do this. I’ve passed the half-way point, deep into the murky middle of the story. It’s a linear story, no real twists or turns here, just a horrible climax to build to and a bittersweet ending. Head down, keep writing.
Another friendly rejection bringing total to 16, 484 left to go.
I’ve started work on Chwedl again and have realized why I quit in the first place. I’ve written my character into a situation where there are no good outs. Every solution I can think of involves either a little hand-waving, or her getting outside help. While it is very in keeping with the fairytale motif to have her helped by ravens or selkies or whatever, I want her to stand out as clever and resourceful. That means not waiting around for something to present an easy solution for her.
The good news is I opened the question of what to do to my facebook friends (go go gadget internet) and I think I see the underlying problem now. She wasn’t clever at all at the beginning when she was assigned this task and didn’t ask the right questions. So… rewriting! It’s amazing how many of my writing plot issues are solved through going back and fixing earlier stupid. Now, to think about how to keep the Fey character realistic in her answers since she’s going to be as squirrely as possible but anything she says has to be the truth (though not, of course, the whole truth).
Woo, I think I solved it! In the process of writing this post I think I came up with a solution that lets everyone be exactly who they are and still makes it tough for my main character without making it impossible or super tedious (who wants to read an entire chapter of a person sorting rocks? I don’t really want to write it either…).
I read an interview with Jay Lake over at SF Signal (full is here) where he mentions that novels take courage. I totally agree. I love writing short stories. I get to jump in and then be done before I have to worry too much about things. I can tinker with a short story through 10 drafts if I want and it won’t take me years. Novels are different. So many threads to hang onto, characters to keep consistent, words to read over… I’m trying to be brave. I want to tell this story, to finish this novel and get it right. This is my second attempt at a novel. I don’t know if I’ll get it right, but I know at least that I can finish something of length. It’s a start.
All right, now that I’ve blogged my way unstuck, it’s time to go change stones into boulders and rewrite a conversation.
It may take courage, but damn, my day job doesn’t suck.
Because we know how much the internet loves lists. Sorry, no bullets.
First, got another nice rejection. I entered into my tracking sheet and then for fun counted up the number of rejections and looked at how many are form and how many came with a note. I have 15 rejections so far for short stories. 6 are form letter, 1 is a negative comment, and 8 are ‘positive’ rejections (good writing, well received, send more, that sort of comment). So the positive rejections out number the negative or form letter ones. Apparently this is a good thing and a sign of tremendous progress. I’m just keeping my head down and figuring out where to send what next. 15 down, 485 rejections left to go!
On to the lists!
Things in progress:
Chwedl: 61,000 words so far, but I’ve hit a snag since I realized I needed to go back and add an entire thread of motivation to make the actions of my main char in the events ahead far more plausible. I aim to have the draft of this done by mid September.
Casimir Hypogean: rewrite is sitting at about 9k I think. This is what I’ll get to before the end of this year. I aim to write the two sequels next year as soon as I’m done with the rewrite. I thought long and hard about bothering to write sequels to an unsold book (conventional wisdom says don’t!), but I think I’m going to ignore that wisdom this time. I’m unpublished, which means I don’t exactly have deadlines on other things at the moment, plus given an optimistic publishing time-frame, say this book was picked up for publication and then they wanted the sequels written. It could be anywhere from 3-6 years from finishing the first before I’d even begin a sequel. That’s too long for me, right now. I have the story and world firmly in mind and while the first book works fine as a stand-alone, the second two are definitely tied together and I want them to work well as a unit. Even if I spend another year writing these three books, I’ll still have learned something about writing (and writing a series) whether they sell or not. So that’s my justification.
Steampunk detective novel: started doing some research for the setting of the first one. It’ll likely be a year before I start writing it, but I do love me some research.
Romance novel that has hijacked my brains: I might start this just to see where it goes. Series romance is only 70k words generally, so maybe I can tinker with it in my “spare” writing time. I certainly love to read romances, so maybe I’ll try writing one. This one involves a girl with a beautiful singing voice and a violent past and of course a handsome composer/violinist, an opera house, and dark secrets. (No masked men living underneath the opera house, sorry…)
Werewolves in Space: now a novella! I had the idea at Worldcon to turn this into a novella sort of prequel to a later novel. I’ve actually cut the werewolf and love story from the plot. I wasn’t sure this novel ever had enough plot to really sustain 100k words, so I think this will be a good compromise. Now I just have to keep it under 17k words.
Short stories: I have so many percolating in my brains at the moment, I’m going to have to write one a week just to clear my plate. I’m hoping I can revive Monday Short Story Day starting next Monday. Sampling of stories includes: Rusalka story, ‘glitter kitten’, ‘shrub daughter’, ‘I, vermin’, jellyfish in space, ‘sparks’, time traveling thief, ‘Tesla’s Daughter’, world as we know it ends (telemarketer) story, ‘The insanity of Mr Leads’, ‘Maskmaker’, and Bloodgood’s cat origin mystery story. My notes make more sense than this list, somewhat.
On the plus side, I now have 9 short stories out making the rounds, which isn’t bad considering back in Feb when I started I only had two.
Time to prioritize and write like a madwoman. It’s funny, before Worldcon I never considered myself that prolific, but I think I’m right in the middle as far as I can tell from the sampling I got there about other people’s work habits. The last six weeks have been a total momentum killer, however. Between Worldcon, Flu, Alaska, and moving, I’ve gotten almost nothing done (1 short story written, 2 revised, only about half a chapter on Chwedl). Time to get back in the habit of the everyday and get some projects finished. I’m giving myself a mini-deadline on the Werewolves in Space novella because I’d like to have it done in time for this quarter of WoTF contest.
So that’s the report for August 2009. We’ll see where I’m at in December or there abouts.
and then I’m getting back to writing about writing, I swear *grin*
I got home from Worldcon with the flu, so I’ve been medicated out of my head and curled up with a fever and racking cough this whole last week. It has especially sucked because one of the good things to come out of Worldcon was that I came home with ideas leaping out of everywhere for all of my current projects and some totally new ones. I feel like I just lost a week of my life, thanks flu!
One of the things I meant to do right when I got home was give a more in-depth report on Worldcon. But there are con reports out there and it’s been a week anyway, so I’m just going to mention a few thoughts and highlights.
The workshop was well-run and while I won’t say it was a bucket of fun, I found it informative and helpful. This was the third time I’ve workshopped Space Bones (and the third form the story has been in), and this workshop liked it the least over all, though I’ve read through comments on the drafts that were handed to me and there are some nice comments that no one bothered to say aloud in the workshop, which is ok but did give the impression that it was universally panned when it wasn’t exactly. However, I think that this story has reached the point where I need to shelve it or rip its guts out and try something a little different. I know the story I’m trying to tell. I read over the comments and my notes and I see that the story I want to tell is getting lost somewhere in this version. I like this story too much to give up on it, and besides, it got a very near miss with one editor, so it can’t be that far off something *someone* would like to read. I have some ideas on how to change/fix it, so we’ll see if I can make it work better. I found the level of crit in the workshop on par with Baen’s, blunt but understandable/helpful on a whole. Plus it was good to get to talk to people and meet them without having to introduce myself to strangers. Context is a good thing.
Another highlight of the con was meeting a bunch of local Portland writers. A bit funny that I haven’t met a single local writer until I went thousands of miles away, but oh well, I’d have to probably leave my house and put up with that whole introducing myself to strangers thing more often. I have new blogs to follow and hopefully a few local connections for people to chat about writing (or whatever) with. I also connected with some of the not-local to me writers whose blogs I follow, though that involved a fair bit of stranger talking to, but I held it together, mostly (I think a couple people caught me on the zomg 1am oversocialized talky edge of things, heh…sorry).
Some of the most fun panels I went to were the Odyssey, Clarion, and Anti-workshop panels. I mention them here because in some ways I’m glad I didn’t get into CW this year (sniff). I’m much better informed now about what the different workshops entail and what might be the best fit for me. The Odyssey grads were especially helpful in this, and I think it’s moved to the top of my list for next year (pending what the instructor list for Clarion SD looks like, of course…). Not that I won’t apply to all three, but I’m thinking of seeing if I can get early acceptance to Odyssey since they do that. Of course, after my sound rejection from CW, who knows if I’ll get into anything next year, but I’ve been working my ass off to try to improve and getting the “almosts” to prove it. Hope and Spring and all that. Oh, funny thing about the Anti-workshop panel and the Clarions panel, they almost ended up being opposites. The Clarion grads all admonished people to be sure they knew what they were getting themselves into, while the anti-workshop (really, the hey you can do it without a workshop panel) ended up agreeing that it can be really helpful. Go figure.
This leads up to the strongest message I took away from Worldcon after listening to countless professional writers and editors. Everyone gets there on their own path. No ones methods look the same, no one followed some careful formula for success (well, other than work hard and write a good story), no path to publication or agent or finished drafts look the same. Which was comforting, because sometimes I feel like I’m diving in face first and hoping thats water down there.
Over all, I’m glad I went (flu notwithstanding). Now, back to real life. I need to revise my list of things to do and add in the new ideas/plans. It’s about time for another “things to get written” post, so I’ll work on that for sometime this week. First, however, I need to reread a few chapters of Chwedl so I know what I was thinking when I quit (has it really been a month since I worked on it? Eek. Momentum loss, anyone?) and then start the writing. And maybe do something with the stack of hotel stationary I scribbled all over in Montreal.
This is the Worldcon overview. I’ll do a panel/workshop/shoutouts post or three in the days following since I’ve just gotten home, had two hours of sleep, and only want to dump a few thoughts before I crash out in front of netflix and my 450 post RSS feed (apparently the internet keeps going even when I’m not staring at it…).
First impressions upon coming home:
The bad: I got pretty lonely much of the time. Apparently I’m not one of those people safely split from my significant other for more than 3-4 days at a time. 7 is too many. Good to know. We’ll see what those roaming charges on my phone look like (eek).
The first day (Thurs) was the hardest. I felt like the new kid entering senior year of high school where it feels like everyone else already knows each other and has plans and things. Part of that is my own damage, since despite being talkative, I’m really quite shy and have trouble inserting myself into (or staying put in) any situation where I feel remotely awkward. People were extremely nice on the whole, but in a “good to meet you, moving along now” sort of way rather than a “hey I’ll stop and chat for a while” sort of way. It was the first day of the con, and much like the first day of school, it felt like everyone was reaffirming acquaintances and catching up. Great for them, not so much fun for the new kid.
Friday went much better, the workshop helped break some ice and the panels were some of the best of the whole con. I ended up braving the parties on Friday, which was a mixed bag of awesome and awkward as well. Anyway, blah blah blah lonely blah blah blah shy blah blah blah awkward etc… On to the good before my tired brain runs in a circle of whine.
The good:
People were super nice. I met two agents and had a lovely time chatting with them. I met lots of people I didn’t know, a handful of people who I stalk follow online, and the panels were on the whole informative and/or entertaining. I got a couple things signed (spent a day’s worth of food money on books…sigh), had some entertaining conversations, and (I think?) didn’t make a total ass of myself. I also came home with mad scribblings of ideas for stories, a good notion of how to rip the guts out of Space Bones, and a new appreciation for how far I’ve come as a writer (it was drilled into me this weekend that getting positive editor comments only a few months into subbing things is a *really* good sign and I should probably just STFU on the whole ‘never gonna sell anything evar!’ rant).
Now. I go collapse. Montreal is *really* far away when they route you through Vancouver and Calgary…
(Oh, and massive gratz to the Hugo winners. I’m please that most of the people I voted for won. Though I silently curse that Metatropolis didn’t… grr)
*note to self, next Worldcon, bring more than 90 dollars to feed yourself for 6 days, please. Saltines and peanutbutter gets old fast. (Also, check out the free food in the con suite before Sunday next time…)
Well, until after Worldcon really, since I’m not bringing a laptop and most likely won’t be checking the net while I’m there.
Finally got a response about Delilah. Great response short of a sale, sigh. They held the story for over 5 months, but in the end decided that due entirely to the biblical retelling nature of the story they had no spot for it. Apparently they loved it otherwise though and want to see something else. *rubs hands together* Fine! Something else you say? I has something else for you…
Well, I’ll have something else for them after Worldcon. I’m beyond oh god oh god I’m full of lame panic and into the “I hope all those reservations I made back in Jan still are good” and “where did I put that thing I totally need for the trip” panic. I made a list, and now I can’t find my list. I’m made of organized, really.
If anyone wants to catch up with me at Worldcon, I’ll be the terrified looking one with the short blue and orange hair.
I’ll be taking notes while I’m there and hopefully posting the funny, strange, or useful stuff here afterwards.
